Hbos Group Reorganisation Bill
	 — 
	Order for Third Reading read.
	 — 
	To be read the Third time on Tuesday 28 March.

Peter Luff: I am grateful for the interest that Minister has shown in the Cotswold line recently, but sadly it is too late to deal in the franchise process with the large number of unmanned stations on the line because the franchise has been let. In future franchise extensions and renewals, will the Department take a careful look at suggestions from train operating companies that more stations should have people actually manning them? As the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams) has just said, it is intimidating for elderly and disabled people in particular who are trying to get access to rail stations.

Peter Bone: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Yesterday the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), said in respect of NHS operations
	"no one waits more than six months". —[Official Report, 20 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 120.]
	Yet on 13 March, in reply to a parliamentary question, the same Minister stated that 74 people were waiting more than six months for their operations. Has the Minister of State given any indication that she will come to the House to make clear which statement is correct?

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That this House does not insist on its Amendments 22E and 22F but disagrees with the Lords in their Amendments 22G and 22H.
	I should say, first, that I am very pleased that their lordships have now dropped their outright opposition to the designation power in the Bill by dropping their previous amendments Nos. 16 and 22. That is very good news and an important development. However, the amendments in lieu are not a real compromise as they would simply delay the power to link the issue of identity cards to designated documents, such as passports, until 2012. That is unacceptable and it would not be right to allow the other place to delay the implementation of legislation that it dislikes until five years have passed. That is a deliberate plan for delay and destruction of the process in the Identity Cards Bill.
	This is the fourth time that this issue has come back to us from the other place and I submit that this really should be the last time. Although we might not expect to phase in the introduction of identity cards to all categories of passport applicants straight away, any constraint on designation would create uncertainties in our planning and a risk of additional costs. In line with other European Union countries, we expect to start the issuing of biometric British passports, including fingerprints, by 2009.
	Without the requirement for recipients of designated documents, such as biometric passports, to register on the national identity register, to be issued with an identity card and to get the protections that the national identity register offers, we would have to provide for two alternative processes with separate records for those who choose to register and those who choose not to register. Such a purely artificial deadline would create real problems for the phasing of the scheme, which would be bound to have an impact on costs. The real intention behind the amendments is to make the scheme unworkable by fuelling uncertainty about its implementation.
	We are also likely to start issuing biometric residence permits to foreign nationals who are temporarily resident here at about the same time—in 2008 or 2009. Again, without the requirement for designation and registration on the national identity register, foreign nationals could opt out of the scheme and we would be forced to maintain separate records for those who opted in and those who opted out of the register. The plans for the ID cards process are predicated on the introduction of a single, seamless process for issuing passports and identity cards as a single package.
	Parliament has spent many hours debating the Bill. Leaving aside the discussion on the draft Bill and the substantial debate on the earlier Bill that was introduced before the election, we spent some 39 hours discussing this Bill on the Floor of the House and in Committee before passing it to the other place in October. The Committee stage involved 11 sittings over seven days. The other place scrutinised the Bill over all its stages for a total of 61 hours, including six days in Committee and three days on Report. Since then, a further 15 hours of parliamentary time have been taken up as each House has considered the other's amendments and reasons. I suggest that it would be inappropriate, and a waste of parliamentary time, for the Opposition in the other place to try to force the Government to use the Parliament Act. Moreover, to suggest that we should wait six years before we are able to implement the Bill is not a compromise in any respect.
	I welcomed the helpful intervention that was made during yesterday's debate in the other place by Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. He suggested that it might be a compromise between the positions of the Government and the Opposition if the Bill provided for an opt-out, rather than an opt-in, for people applying for a designated document such as a passport. I understand the reasoning behind Lord Armstrong's proposal and am very grateful to him for his efforts to help to resolve the impasse. However, I have to say that while I agree that an opt-out might well make more sense than an opt-in, the reality would be the same. We would still be introducing a large degree of uncertainty into the plans for rolling out identity cards linked to passports.
	Perhaps I can also emphasise that fact that, as I have already made clear in debates in the House, anyone who feels strongly enough about the linkage not to want to be issued with an ID card in the initial phase will be free to surrender their existing passport and apply for a new passport before the designation order takes effect. Although I doubt whether many people would want to avoid the opportunity of obtaining an ID card when renewing their passport, the facility will be available. I hope that Lord Armstrong will consider those points before deciding whether to table further amendments in another place.
	In fact, I believe that the moment for such a suggestion has passed because it appears that the Opposition have moved beyond their outright resistance to the designation powers in the Bill—the latest Lords amendments accept the principle of designation. The argument now is simply about whether the powers should be available straight away, or whether an artificial delay should be imposed.
	I understand the position of the Liberal Democrats. Indeed, the Liberal Democrat spokesman in the other place, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, has at least been consistent in opposing the Bill because of his party's avowed dislike of identity cards in principle.
	The position of the Conservative Opposition, both here and in the other place, is more complicated. When the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was leading his party, he said in an article in The Daily Telegraph on 20 December 2004, which was less than six months before the general election:
	"We must protect our citizens in every way we can and in my judgement that includes ID cards".
	On Second Reading of the original Bill on 20 December 2004—again, less than six months before the general election was called—the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said that
	"it is incumbent on all of us to examine carefully any measures which might enhance the nation's security. Identity cards introduced properly and effectively may help to do that."—[Official Report, 20 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 1953.]
	The Conservative Opposition have since flip-flopped this way and that on identity cards. They have voted for identity cards, abstained and voted against them. They decided not to mention identity cards at all in their election manifesto. However, it now appears—I welcome this—that they accept the principle of linking the issue of identity cards to designated documents such as passports.
	On 18 March, The Times reported Conservative party sources as saying that they wanted the delay added to the designation powers, so that if the Conservatives were to win the next election they would have time to repeal the legislation. That report may have been inaccurate, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) will have something to say about that.
	I note with interest that yesterday the Leader of the Opposition in the other place, Lord Strathclyde, was not prepared to commit his party to such a stance. In response to an intervention by my noble Friend Baroness Scotland, he said:
	"She knows of our opposition to this legislation and to the whole principle of ID cards. What our position will be at the next election, I cannot tell."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2006; Vol. 680, c. 38.]
	That sums up the problem. Lord Strathclyde was not prepared to commit his party to such a stance and refused to confirm whether his party will be committed to reversing the ID card provisions at the next election.
	As the Conservative party seeks to use its entrenched vote in the Lords to frustrate the will of the elected House, I urge it to think again given the deep inconsistencies in its position throughout the whole debate.

George Howarth: No; if I conclude remarks, somebody else might be able to speak; indeed, the hon. Gentleman might be able to.
	The second game of semantics that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough engaged in today involved quoting my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he was shadow Home Secretary in the 1990s, saying that he was opposed to the introduction of an identity cards Bill. The implication is that my right hon. Friend changed his mind on this issue when he came into government. That is partly true, but it was not true between 1997 and 1999, when I was a junior Home Office Minister. I have good reason to know that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was still opposed to the introduction of identity cards during that period. Opposition Members must ask themselves what has happened in the meantime to make him and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary believe that the time is now right for their introduction.
	The world has changed enormously since that time. We have seen huge changes in mass migration around the world, and the rise of Islamist terrorism. The events of 9/11 constituted the worst example of that terrorism, and last summer's London bombings the most recent. That is why people feel that the time is right to introduce identity cards.
	It stretches the imagination too far to claim that my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and Home Secretary want to introduce identity cards for a reason entirely different from what has been claimed. The world has changed and, for my part, I would support the introduction of compulsory identity cards. However, the proposals in the Bill will at least give us an opportunity to challenge people to prove that they are who they say that they are.

Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that, on the important matter of advertising, we do not want people to use ambush marketing on the pretence that someone came from their area when that was not true. Of course, he rightly reminds us that the success in the Commonwealth games to date has come from all the home countries, and we should rightly applaud all those who are involved.
	The Minister rightly made the point in introducing this string of amendments that the Bill has received a great deal of cross-party support. These proceedings are rather like the marathon runner who can find the extra energy to sprint at the end of a long race: we have the opportunity to make some important improvements during the Bill's final stages, as a result of the cross-party consensus.
	The Minister is well aware of the history; it has been referred to already. Much of what we are debating now is based on ideas that were first suggested by the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) and myself in Committee, when the Minister was not prepared to accept an addition to the list of consultees in the Bill, particularly in relation to the advertising industry, notwithstanding the fact that the proposal was modelled on the Gambling Act 2005, which the very same Minister had taken through the House only a few months earlier. None the less, he was not prepared to accept that proposal. The Bill then went to another place for debate, and we were all eventually delighted that the Government were willing to accept that the advertising industry should become a statutory consultee.
	Although I clearly welcome these amendments, because they are based on proposals that originally came from Liberal Democrat and other Opposition Members, I want to raise an issue with the Minister nevertheless. We are considering the important issue of ambush advertising and marketing, and it is crucial for the House to accept that such things can happen and that we must guard against them for obvious reasons, to protect the Olympic symbol from its unwanted use in advertising.
	We therefore accept not only the need to take rapid action, as people propose novel ideas for ambush marketing, but the need for rapid consultation. That is all accepted, so it is important to take account of the fact that, only yesterday, the Joint Committee on Human Rights commented on that aspect of the Bill in its seventh report on legislative scrutiny. On page 6 of that report, on the procedures that might be adopted, it said:
	"Ordinarily this would be the occasion for adverse comment from our Committee".
	It went on to point out that it would not make such adverse comments, because of the special circumstances of the Olympic and Paralympic games. However, it made a strongly worded recommendation. It said:
	"We consider it, however, all the more important that the explanatory memorandum which accompanies the regulations when they are made provides a detailed explanation as to why in the Secretary of State's view the restrictions on advertising are compatible with the rights identified above".
	The Committee was obviously referring to human rights.
	It is crucial that the Minister use this opportunity to give absolute assurances that the regulations, when published, take account of Joint Committee's recommendations. With that said, I, like the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent, am delighted to accept these Lords amendments.
	Lords amendment agreed to.
	Lords amendments Nos. 2 to 10 agreed to.

Richard Caborn: This group of amendments relates to the status of the words and phrases listed in schedule 4. In debate, both here and in the other place, considerable concern was expressed about the "evidential burden" that we had created in relation to schedule 4. The evidential burden would have meant that the use in combination of the words and phrases listed in paragraph 3 of the schedule would, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, have been treated as constituting an association with the London Olympics. Although the burden was a light one, by which a defendant had to produce any evidence that an association had not been made, to shift the burden back to LOCOG to prove its case, we have listened to what has been said during the Bill's passage and have taken the opportunity to amend it by removing the evidential presumption.
	We still feel that the list of words and phrases in schedule 4 is important in helping the public to understand what sort of activity may create an association with the London games, but we appreciate the concerns that have been expressed about the position in which we would have been putting advertisers and businesses by virtue of an evidential presumption.
	The amendments will remove the evidential presumption attached to the use of the words and phrases listed in paragraph 3. Instead, we have suggested that when considering whether the London Olympics association right has been breached, the courts would be able to consider, in particular, whether the defendant had used a combination of the words and phrases listed in schedule 4.
	I hope that hon. Members will be able to support this approach. It removes the evidential presumption about which both Houses had expressed concerns, but retains in the Bill the list of words and phrases that provides greater clarity for the public about what the association right is about, and allows the court to take into account the use of those words and phrases when deciding whether someone has infringed the association right. I hope that the House will accept the amendments.

Hugh Robertson: The amendment addresses the use of presumption, in that a person is "presumed" to have infringed the London Olympics association right by using any of the words listed in the Bill. It has become known, slightly unfortunately, as the reversal of the presumption of innocence, and it was one of the most controversial aspects of the original Bill.
	As the Minister has said, we debated the issue at length both in Committee and on Report, and I warned him on Third Reading that I thought that it would cause problems in the other place.In Committee we discussed the defences that were available in the original Bill and the fact that the approach was consistent with Sheldrake v. DPP and the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. However, concerns remained, focused mainly on two areas: first, the fact that it is a basic principle of English law that one is innocent until proven guilty, and the regulation at least seemed to contravene that principle; and secondly, the fact that the Bill seemed to weight the dice firmly in favour of LOCOG.
	We all accept that the marketing of major international sports events is now in a new era, and organisers demand exclusivity to derive the most commercially advantageous sponsorship deals. As a quid pro quo, we all accept that some of the money finds its way back to the grass-roots development of sport. I wholly agree with that principle. However, it is important to strike a balance so that the enforcement of the measures is not unduly heavy-handed.
	The amendments represent a good compromise. LOCOG gets the exclusivity that it requires and the security of knowing that the regulations will take effect on Royal Assent, while on the other side of the fence, the industry gets some measure of protection from over-zealous enforcement. I therefore have no hesitation in agreeing to the amendments.

Anne Moffat: I regret having to bring in an element of negativity, but I wonder whether hon. Friend shares my concerns about a situation in my constituency whereby a mushroom farm that has taken on a lot of migrant workers has been deliberately squeezing out the local work force. The migrant workers are working for far lower terms and conditions of employment and for excessive hours, and the indigenous work force, who were in their hundreds, are now down to 20-odd. Surely we must do something to protect our indigenous workers and prevent the racial tensions that mount as a result of this.

Damian Green: I am grateful for that burst of clarity from the Government Front Bench, which is a rare treat.
	While I am on tier 2, however, let me deal with the vexed question of restaurants, which the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) rightly raised. We are grateful to him, and I am also grateful to Christine Lee of the North London Chinese Association, and to others including Mr. Enam Ali from the Guild of Bangladeshi Restaurateurs for passing on their detailed concerns about the effect that the new system might have on hundreds of small businesses. I know that the Minister has held meetings on this subject, so he is aware of the main points of concern, which boil down to whether enough chefs with specialist skills will be available to keep Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi and other restaurants going.
	A few days ago, the Home Secretary appeared to say that the way to solve the growing shortage is simply to train replacements in this country. Again, the House deserves some clarity as to whether that is the Government's solution to the problem. Ministers are aware of the concerns that under the current proposals even highly skilled chefs will not score enough points to qualify under tier 2, particularly if they do not have any significant paper qualifications. There is also the issue of benefits in kind, such as accommodation, which is often provided for chefs who come to this country. It is not obvious from the Command Paper how the salary-based allocation of points accounts for that. Mr. Ali, whom I mentioned, said:
	"We can cite numerous examples where the lack of educational opportunity (which is the norm throughout the third world) to gain formal qualifications equivalent to NVQ levels 3 or 4, is being abused by Entry Officers as a pretext for Visa refusal. Typical is the story of a top chef currently running the kitchens of a five-star Bombay restaurant, who cannot gain entry to the UK because he is virtually illiterate."
	Clearly, such sensitive issues will arise.

Neil Gerrard: I welcome the debate, and a great deal of what is in the White Paper. That is not always the case when I see what the Home Office proposes. We do need clarity in the system: people must be able to understand the rules, because that is good for both employers and applicants. There is no doubt that the present system is far too complex and bureaucratic. Many of us will know of people who have been given work permits and then refused entry clearance, although it must have been blatantly obvious that some of them would be refused entry clearance before they were given work permits.
	A huge amount of detail remains to be filled in. The White Paper is really no more than an outline, although both the Minister and the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) referred to some of the detail. Neither this debate nor any other debate on the subject that I have heard has dealt adequately with the extent to which a managed migration system should relate purely to economic benefits for the United Kingdom, or—a key question, in my view—with how much attention will be paid to the rights of the people who come here to work. I do not want to see a Gastarbeiter system involving people coming here and working for quite lengthy periods with no rights. That would affect not just those people but the rest of the work force, in ways that I may describe later.
	As for the application process, it is clearly advantageous for both applicant and employer to know what is required and to be able to carry out some self-assessment. In theory at least, that is simpler than the present arrangements. However, I should like the Minister to clarify a couple of points, one of which is about the position of sponsors in some of the tiers.
	Obviously the reliability of a sponsor will matter. I do not object to the suggestion that an employer or educational institution should have a duty to report when someone has disappeared, or has not even taken up an offer. I note, however, that in some cases sponsors themselves will be given either an A or a B grade. I am far from clear about how that will work, especially early in the process, before there has been much experience of the scheme. What assumptions will be involved in deciding whether a sponsor will be given an A or a B? Will there be any arrangements for sponsors to contest their assessments? It could be argued that an A or a B grade could constitute a reflection on the sponsor's reputation. Certainly some sponsors who receive B grades may wish to contest them, for that simple reason.
	As others have pointed out, the system of sponsorships and grading may tend to favour the large employer who continues to import large numbers of workers, rather than the small employer who may find it harder to enter the system. Another question that has been raised concerns the liability of an employer at the end of a contract of employment. I feel that it would be unreasonable to expect a small employer, in particular, to bear any liability once the contract had ended. At the same time, there seems to be no scope for people who may have worked here for two or three years to have a holiday, or to wind up their affairs before they leave.
	Obvious questions have been raised about how the higher tiers will cope with people who may be highly skilled, but who may not have academic qualifications or earn large salaries. I have another concern about tier 1, however. It does not require a job offer or a sponsor; it allows someone to come in purely on the basis of qualifications and earnings—in some instances, perhaps, on the basis of qualifications alone. We must ensure that we do not strip other countries of skilled people whom they cannot afford to lose. We have had discussions of this kind in the past about the health service, but it is not only in the health service that such problems arise.
	What causes me most concern is tier 3, which will probably cover most low-skilled migrants. We know that some sectors, such as agriculture and hospitality, are highly dependent on unskilled labour from outside the United Kingdom. Tier 3 involves a maximum of 12 months, no rights of entry for dependants and no right to switch to another employment route. The White Paper says that that tier will be run by "operators". I should be interested to hear from the Minister who he thinks those operators will be.

Neil Gerrard: I entirely agree. The Minister has made clear that he is willing to talk to the various industrial interests, which will have to make their case if they believe that they have one. The skills advisory boards in particular should be consulted, because they will have a key role in identifying skills shortages.
	The point that I was trying to make, however, related to lower-skilled migrants. If we go down the road of effectively shutting out people who are not from other EU countries, what will the possible consequences be? The danger is that that could inadvertently result in more unauthorised people trying to work illegally. Such an approach rests to some degree on an assumption that unskilled work is not really essential work, that it does not matter that much and it does not matter who does it. However, London has a huge number of unskilled people who have come from other countries to do such work. If they were not here, whole sections of London's economy would virtually collapse.
	Reference has been made to the effects on indigenous workers, and to the fear that the presence of migrant workers holds down pay and conditions. In this regard, employment rights for migrant workers are very important. Some of the exploitation of migrant workers that undoubtedly goes on is clearly related to their inability to enforce their employment rights. There could be a number of reasons for such an inability. In some cases, the explanation is simply a lack of knowledge of those rights. We should perhaps ensure that those who work in the tier 3 schemes get information on their employment rights in their own language, so that they can understand them and know what they can do to enforce them. If one examined the evidence, it would doubtless become clear that some migrant workers are being discriminated against on the basis of their immigration status. Migrant workers who are sacked by their employer do not simply lose their jobs, they also lose the right to be in this country. That, in itself, can make it much more difficult for such people to enforce the employment rights that they should be able to enforce.

Peter Lilley: We are asked to consider today a points-based system of managed migration. Most of the management gurus tell us that the important aspect of any management system is not the process, but the objectives towards which it is managed. That is also true of a points-based managed migration system. How it will work will depend above all on the objectives the Government use it to pursue. I wish to discuss, first, what the Government's objectives are, and secondly, what the objectives should be for any points-based managed migration system.
	Happily, we know—not, admittedly, from the Minister's speech, but from other sources—what the objectives of the Government's migration policy are, because they were spelt out objectively by Home Office officials in a Government document that the House required them to produce. That document stated:
	"The government wants to encourage lawful migration to the country . . . sustaining and perhaps increasing current levels of lawful immigration."
	So we know that the Government's objective is to encourage, sustain and increase lawful migration to the UK, presumably using the proposed system to achieve it.
	The Government have certainly been successful in increasing immigration. The net inflow last year was about 223,000 people; more came to settle in the UK than left to return home or emigrate. The figure for net immigration was five times the number Labour inherited in 1997. We know how the Government have achieved that figure: by systematically liberalising the immigration rules. They have trebled the number of work permits granted and drawn to companies' attention the fact that they can bring people from abroad to fill vacancies. In the pamphlet I produced last year, "Too much of a good thing?", I list 10 other liberalising measures that the Government have introduced.
	Above all, we know how the Government will operate a points-based system if they generalise it, because they have already introduced one such system. In 2002, they set up the highly skilled migrants programme, setting the number of points people needed to be able to come to this country and seek work. The Government set the points objectively, to establish the level of skill they thought desirable in anyone given the right to seek work in the UK.
	Only a modest number of people applied under the scheme, however, so did the Government accept that that was the number who should be allowed to immigrate? No, they promptly reduced the number of points needed to acquire right of entry under the scheme to such a degree that the system was overwhelmed. We know that the Government will, if need be, manipulate a points-based system to achieve their objectives of encouraging, sustaining and possibly increasing immigration.
	What should be the objectives of a points-based system? First, let us dispose of the notion that one objective should be to exclude economic immigrants because they are intrinsically undesirable. The caricature of economic migrants as welfare scroungers, driven by a desire to milk our benefit system, prone to criminality and a danger to society is not simply wrong; it is by and large the reverse of the truth. For most of my life, I have lived in areas where there was a large number of immigrants. I have known them as my neighbours, worked with them as my constituents and worshipped in the same Churches, and I have concluded, like anybody who knows the facts, that the vast majority of people who come to the UK to work are decent, hard-working and law-abiding.
	Conservatives particularly admire two virtues that characterise economic migrants; they tend to be enterprising—they have to be to get to this country—and to be driven by family commitment and cohesion. We are biased in their favour. In the language of "1066 And All That", we think immigrants are "a Good Thing", but the implication, common to both sides of the debate, is that we need to manage migration and that we need to restrict it—that we can have too much of a good thing, and there should be limits.
	Secondly, let me dispose of the notion that the reason for managing migration is that immigrants take British jobs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) said earlier, that idea is based on the lump of labour fallacy. In any well-working market the number of jobs will sooner or later equal the number of people seeking work, who will price themselves into jobs and by obtaining them generate extra demand, exactly equal to the amount of demand that they have absorbed from the labour market. However, precisely the same fallacies lie behind the Government's claims that we need workers to fill shortages.
	Whereas those who want to play the race card argue that there is a lump of labour—a fixed amount of work to do—and that, if we allow in immigrants, there will be too many of them and they will take some of that fixed amount of jobs and some of our people will be out of the work, the anti-racists, including the Government and my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham, say that there is a fixed amount of work, but that there are not enough people to do it and that we must therefore import them from abroad. That is the same fallacy, based on the same logical mistake that there is a lump of labour, that prices do not work and that extra workers do not create extra demand.
	Indeed, the very idea of a shortage in a properly functioning market is problematic. The vice-chairman of the US Commission on Immigration Reform said:
	"the very phrase . . . 'labour shortage' provokes puzzlement or amazement among most informed analysts of . . . labour markets."
	His colleague added:
	"Long term labour shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say they don't exist. They are created when employers or Government agencies tamper with the natural functioning of the wage mechanism."
	So shortages can occur only in unusual circumstances.
	The idea that we suffer from a generalised labour shortage is denied by the evidence. The symptom of a shortage in any market economy is a rising price. If we had a labour shortage in this country, we would see wage inflation, but we have never had a period of lower wage inflation in our lives. The idea that we are suffering from a labour shortage is manifestly untrue.
	The idea that importing labour fills established shortages has also been disproved by the facts. The Prime Minister began some years ago to say that there are 500,000 vacancies in the British economy and that we need to employ people from abroad to fill them. Some years later, we have imported more than 500,000 people; there are still 500,000 vacancies in the British economy. So that theory has not been proven, because all those who come to work in this country and get jobs generate as much demand for additional work to fulfil their consumption needs—the goods and services that they consume—as they fill any shortage that exists before they arrive. That is why that theory simply does not work in this or any other country: we do not end shortages by importing workers.
	As for shortages in certain sectors, they can surely only persist if pay is not allowed to rise to the market-clearing level that will attract people to acquire those skills domestically. If pay is held down artificially in sectors by importing people from abroad who are willing to work at below the market-clearing level for this country, a temporary shortage can be rendered permanent. Of course, the pay will not rise to the level at which people in the domestic market will acquire those skills, so people must continue to be imported from abroad. That has clearly happened in a number of professions in this country, particularly in public sector health and medical services.
	The Government's whole theory that there are endemic shortages that can be filled only from abroad is, by and large, wrong. We should avoid becoming permanently reliant on immigration to provide any skill that can and should be acquired by the resident population. We should allow the market to work, with pay rates rising to levels that attract people from the resident population to acquire those desired skills. Even if we import people to meet short-term difficulties, we should not allow that to be used as a reason to depress pay rates in that sector. That would allow the shortage to become permanent.
	What the system should do is focus on giving work permits to people with skills that people in this country cannot acquire by the normal processes that are used to fill vacancies. There are such skills and, in the past, they have been the main reason for importing workers from abroad. The first such type of skill is company-specific skills. Companies have their own way of doing things and those that operate worldwide will often want to bring their accountant to this country to install their accounting system here, to train people to operate that system or to introduce their work-flow processes. For all the systems that IBM or Coca-Cola have, they will bring workers here to establish the systems. In due course, those workers will probably return home having transmitted the skills that are specific to that company to people in this country. That is fine and right; we ought to encourage that process. If anything, we should make it easier for international companies to transfer personnel from subsidiary to subsidiary across the world so that they can transfer the specific skills that have been developed internally within those companies.
	The second type of skill that one cannot easily just acquire is entrepreneurship. I believe that entrepreneurs are born rather than made. If we can import more entrepreneurs who will generate high-quality jobs in this country for other people, that is excellent. Let us do that. It is another reason that we have traditionally given for granting work permits.
	Another category is that of star performers—the people of outstanding skills at an international level. Many sectors of the City need a star performer in their analytical or sales teams. In medicine, one may need a star performer to develop a particular team and its expertise. We should bring in the star performers and, around them, they will generate teams and create jobs and wealth for those of us who star less in those professions.
	Very rarely, there can be cases in which economies of scale mean that it is impossible to recruit domestically sufficient people with the particular skill for a post because we do not have the people with the basic aptitudes to fill such posts. An industry the size of City probably could not meet all its needs from the domestic population, so it is perfectly reasonable to allow it to bring in additional people from abroad to build the huge wealth-generating capacity that the City has.
	We therefore need to encourage some immigration. Some immigration is a good thing, but I use the analogy of oil and petrol. We need some oil in a car or it will not go at all. However, putting more and more oil in it does not make it go any faster. It is not like petrol. The Government seem to think that immigration is more like petrol than oil. They think that if they put the foot on the accelerator and encourage people to come, the economy will grow faster and faster.
	We need some sensible targeted immigration through a managed points-based system. However, to respond to the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), why do we need to worry about numbers? If immigrants are a good thing—in my view, they are; by and large, they are admirable people—why do we want to impose any restrictions at all? The answer is that we are one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. South-east England, including London, is more densely populated even than the Netherlands. It is absurd to suggest that there not enough people here to run a good economy. It is absurd to suggest that we need to—or even can—attract relatively large numbers of people. It is absurd to suggest that we ought to be a country of immigration. For most of our history we have been a country of net emigration, and it is only in recent years that we have become a country of net immigration.

Jeremy Wright: I follow the Minister's argument, but there is more advantage in the proposals than simply the ability to manage a system of economic migration. They also constitute an opportunity to establish clearly from the outset that people who come to this country can make a contribution, but that there are also expectations of them. The system's ability to admit those who can make a contribution benefits not only the economy but many other aspects of life. I understand the Minister's points, but the debate could be allowed to go a little wider, and that is what I have tried to in my contribution.
	However, with the reservations that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) expressed about whether the detail of the system will work as it should, I want to make it clear that I support what lies behind the scheme, not only because it is a way of managing economic migration but because it is a factor in a more wide-ranging system, which we can use to ensure that immigration works for the benefit of those who already live here and those who, quite properly, wish to do so.

Andrew Miller: I accept that the closure of the post office notified on Christmas eve was due to unfortunate and unforeseen reasons; a robbery at the post office had brought forward the closure. However, Mr. Barrett wrote:
	"Within the scope of the Network Reinvention programme, we have now completed our work in your constituency and no further closure proposals will be considered under this programme in your constituency."
	If I were in the Minister's position I could be pedantic and say, "Ah, that was the Post Office reinvention plan", but I remind the House that the heading on the letter was unambiguous: "Post Office area plan for Ellesmere Port & Neston".
	What were the motives behind that lack of clarity? Laziness, incompetence, deliberate action? I will let the House determine the answer. I only know that one of the most impoverished parts of my constituency was left without an essential service. Post Office management said, "They can go to the Crown office just up the road", referring to elderly and infirm people in an area with the lowest car ownership in the sub-region.
	The letter of 23 December 2004 said that there would be no further closures, yet a year later the Post Office came back for another bite at the cherry and announced that the Crown office would be absorbed in an Asda store. The proposal was to halve the counter space and the resources for post office services in the town centre. I was told that the Post Office had identified financial losses at the Crown office, but that information was not shared with me.
	I have no complaint about Asda, but I object to being insulted by the deviousness of Post Office management. I do not mind that personally, as in this place one gets used to being insulted by experts, but Members are entitled to expect at least some deference from a public body towards our constituents. No such thing has come from the Post Office.
	My early-day motion 1446 states:
	"That this House condemns the manner in which the Post Office has failed to engage in meaningful consultations with either staff or public about the closure of Ellesmere Port Crown Office; and calls upon the Government, as shareholders, to instruct the Post Office management to withdraw its current proposal, to share with stakeholders the financial facts and ensure that if it demonstrates a position that is commercially recoverable that time is allowed to enable a proper recovery programme to be instituted."
	That is not an unreasonable request from a Member of Parliament, yet it was wholly ignored. The Post Office made no comment on it, apart from an indirect one to which I shall refer.
	A letter of 6 February set out in four or five pages the logic behind the Post Office's decision to close. I was assured that there would be
	"longer opening hours . . . a brand new, modern Post Office branch . . . flat, level access . . . automatic entrance doors . . . a low-level writing desk . . . car parking facilities nearby . . . and . . . a bright, modern, customer friendly retail environment within which to shop".
	Interestingly, that letter referred to events that occurred just yesterday—the axe fell finally, the closure happened and the new system came into force.
	All hon. Members have constituents who are prolific letter writers. I bet that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, could name a handful of people in your own constituency who are the most prolific letter writers, as could every other hon. Member. One such in my constituency is gentleman called Mr. Ellams, who writes to me on all sorts of issues, and he would not be offended if I say that I find myself in disagreement with him on nine out of 10 of them. However, he pointed out something extremely useful yesterday, and the Minister ought to be aware of it, bearing in mind the commitments that the Post Office has given to me in writing, which the Minister has seen. Mr. Ellams says that some of the counters were closed and that queues were coming out of the door—at a post office that was supposed to provide a better service for my constituents. Frankly, that is what I expected, because I do not believe that the provision for either the transition into the Asda operation or the final scale of the Asda operation will be adequate to meet my constituents' needs.
	One of the issues that I raised in the early-day motion and in the subsequent correspondence with the Post Office was the financial basis on which the decision was taken. At a public meeting—at which the Post Office was at least represented, to be fair to two very junior members of its staff—a member of the public asked a question, doubting, as I do, the veracity of the financial information that was presented to us. We were simply told that the Crown post office in Ellesmere Port was making a loss. That may be the case, but the point was that a financial year had not been completed since the closure of the two sub-post offices, so no stable pattern worth a light could be analysed. No sensible business financial planning is based on the kind of data that could have been drawn together in that time.
	What made me particularly angry was that, when I eventually pressed the Post Office about the financial basis on which the information was taken, Julia Marwood wrote me a letter, dated 20 February, in which she said:
	"Turning to the financial case behind our decision to change the way in which we manage Ellesmere Port Post Office branch, I fully appreciate it would give a clearer picture if we could simply publish the financial information and data relating to any individual branch."
	I asked the Post Office not to publish that information, but to make it available to me, as a Member of Parliament. The letter continues:
	"However we are not obliged, or indeed, at liberty to disclose this confidential information with any third party due to commercial confidentiality."
	I have a little difficulty with that. I had understood that we taxpayers owned the Post Office. Of course, if some information is commercially sensitive, I would accept that. I deal with other companies with a similar structure. For example, I regularly deal with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd, which shares with me huge amounts of information. It provides it to me in confidence as a Member of Parliament with a local constituency interest. Why cannot the Post Office do exactly the same? Does it think that some smart Alec Member of Parliament might come up with a better idea because they have more knowledge of the locality that they represent than the people sitting miles away in their ivory towers in the Post Office branch change section as it is now called? It would not be unreasonable for the House to say to the Post Office, "In these circumstances, we expect you to share information with Members of Parliament."
	The language gets even more confusing. In November 2005 when the Post Office decided that the Crown office was to close, it wrote a nice, lengthy and detailed letter to me. It says:
	"As an organisation committed to delivering the best possible service"—
	tell that to my constituents—
	"we want to do our best to meet our customers' requirements and maintain continued access to our branch network."
	No wonder we are confused, because the Post Office is confused. It confuses branch with Crown offices, but that is its choice. The letter continues:
	"Whilst the decision to change the management of the Ellesmere Port Post Office branch to Asda Store Ltd is not, in itself, subject to public consultation, we are keen to seek feedback".
	In writing to me, the Post Office says that the matter is not subject to public consultation.
	I know that my hon. Friend the Minister treats his correspondence seriously. In a letter he wrote to me on 22 January this year, he says:
	"No decisions will be taken on individual closures until after public consultation has been completed."
	Again, there is an anomaly between the position adopted by the Post Office management in its discussions with Members of Parliament and what it is saying to my hon. Friend. I do not believe for a minute that he invented that sentence without believing that the Post Office should have consulted representatives in the constituency.
	The Post Office can rescue the situation and the operation in my constituency can be made more profitable. However, given the decision on the Station Road branch affected one of the most disadvantaged wards in the country let alone my area, the fact that the Post Office is prepared to ride roughshod over people such as the folk in the Westminster ward in Ellesmere Port and to use disingenuous language in correspondence with a Member of Parliament and the fact that there has been no attempt to resolve the problem by a process of examination, negotiation and studies as to whether alternative solutions can be found, I despair for the future of the Post Office. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend and his colleagues will get hold of a few people very tightly and suggest to them that because the Post Office is a public entity—it should remain so—it should act with greater consideration towards the people whom Members of the House seek to represent. When ideas come forward about alternative ways forward, it should respond positively to them.

Barry Gardiner: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) on securing the debate. He has been absolutely assiduous in voicing concerns about recent changes to the local provision of post office services in Ellesmere Port on behalf of his constituents. I can honestly say that over the course of the past four or five weeks, I have not had a single refreshment in the House of Commons Tea Room without my hon. Friend sitting beside me to discuss these matters. Indeed, I was almost at the point of being able to deliver his entire speech to the House myself without notes. However, in saying that, I do not wish in any way to undermine the excellent work that he has done to represent his constituents' interests to the Government.
	My hon. Friend spelled out clearly and fully his views and concerns about the changes that are planned by Post Office Ltd in the coming months to post office services in the Ellesmere Port town centre. The future of the post office network is relevant to every Member of the House. We all share concerns about the future provision of postal services in our constituencies. We all also recognise, as I know that my hon. Friend does, that until 1999 and the advent of the action taken by the Government, there had been underinvestment in the business for decades. Most of all, we know that advances in technology, greater mobility and changes in constituents' shopping and financial habits have resulted in a growing proportion of people simply not using post offices in the way in which they did in the past. For many reasons, custom across the network has sharply reduced, which has created a spiral of decline in certain areas.
	If the post office network is to survive and thrive in the longer term, it needs to change significantly. The Government want a post office network that can prosper on the basis of the needs of today and the future, not those of 20 or 30 years ago. However, in doing so, we also have to face up to present reality. The Government are providing £150 million a year to support the rural network and will continue to do so until 2008—I am delighted to say that state aid clearance came through from the European Union only a couple of weeks ago.
	May I correct my hon. Friend on a point about the directly managed Crown offices? He implied that his correspondent from the Post Office had been mistaken in calling them branches. In fact, the correspondent was entirely correct because the proper name for them is directly managed branches, although we colloquially retain the name Crown offices.
	The Crown offices and the deprived urban area network are also losing substantial amounts. Collectively, some 500 directly managed offices have been losing £70 million a year. Clearly the status quo is not sustainable in such circumstances. Several important steps to restructure and revitalise the Post Office have already been taken, but the future of the network rightly remains an issue of national debate. It is clear that there are still considerable challenges to be faced.
	The starting point for the Government's policy for the post office network is the performance and innovation unit report "Modernising the Post Office Network". The Prime Minister commissioned that report in 1999, because it had become clear that, following decades of decline and under-investment, dramatic action was necessary to get the business on track and to secure its long-term future. We set about introducing policies that would help to achieve that, which previous Governments had totally failed to do.
	The PIU report showed very starkly that the post office network had not kept pace with the changing needs of its customers. Too many post offices had become dingy and shabby through lack of investment and were losing business. The report was widely welcomed as squaring up honestly to the challenges facing the network, and the Government accepted and implemented all 24 of its recommendations.
	It is important to remember that the post office network has been contracting since the 1960s. Between 1979 and 1997, Conservative Governments presided over 3,500 closures, and in all that time they produced not a single policy on how to ensure that the network could continue to remain relevant into the 21st century. There have been reductions in post office usage for all sorts of reasons, and the absence of investment by the previous Government is significant, but above all changes in lifestyle and habits mean that a large proportion of our constituents do not use the Post Office as much as they used to and custom has sharply reduced. That is not a matter of the Government or some unseen market force acting against the interests of post offices and their customers; it is about ordinary people—our constituents—making personal choices.
	Research commissioned by Postcomm, the regulator for postal services, has also noted that in other countries people are also increasingly accessing services electronically, over the telephone and through the internet. In response, most countries have been remodelling their networks, usually by closing the smallest or least profitable offices and converting directly run offices to agency offices. In Germany, for instance, the number of post office branches has been reduced by 17,000 offices, which is more than the entire UK network of 14,500 offices. In Britain, other networks, such as those of the retail banks have been scaled back too. Like them, the post office network needs to adapt to changes in people's preferences and new ways of doing business. Those external changes pose big challenges to the network of post offices, which must be addressed, not ducked.
	We must recognise that 96 per cent. of the nation's post offices are run by sub-postmasters, who are private business people who have invested not only their own money into their businesses, but a great amount of care and effort to help the post office network achieve its highly regarded status. My hon. Friend has said that we, the taxpayer, own the Post Office. I must inform him that we, the taxpayer, own Post Office Ltd, but we do not own the 14,500 sub-post offices up and down the country, which are private businesses that enter into commercial contracts with the Post Office. The reason why it is not possible for the Post Office to make available commercially confidential figures about the viability of those offices is because it would prejudice the capacity of that private business person to sell their business in due course.